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“If Hitler wins, every single right we now possess and for which we have struggled here in America for more than three centuries will be instantaneously wiped out by Hitler’s triumphs. If the allies win, we shall at least have the right to continue fighting for a share of democracy for ourselves.“

A Breath of FreedomBy Maria Höhn &Martin KlimkePalgrave Macmillan October 2010> more

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Ralph Abernathy

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) was a Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement. Born in rural Linden, Alabama, in 1926, Dr. Ralph Abernathy attained degrees in sociology and mathematics and later became a professor and dean at Alabama State University. While still in college, he followed his call to ministry, serving at First Baptist Church from 1952, then the largest African-American congregation in Montgomery, Alabama.

Jointly with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then a fellow pastor in Montgomery, Abernathy organized the famed Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955/56 and commenced his lifelong struggle for civil rights. In 1957, Abernathy cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was to become one the most prominent organizations in the fight for desegregation.

Following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, Abernathy assumed the presidency of SCLC, leading the Poor People's Campaign later that year. He resigned his post in 1977, when he unsuccessfully ran for the United States Congress. His autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down was published one year before he passed away in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1990.

Dr. Ralph Abernathy visited Germany several times for his work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the World Peace Council. He stayed in West and East Berlin accompanying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the fall of 1964 and returned, then the president of the SCLC, to East Berlin from September 27–29, 1971. Together with Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery of Atlanta and Reverend Dr. Wyatt Walker of Harlem, he received an extensive welcome by representatives of the East German state.

During his two days in the country, Abernathy signed the Golden Book of the city, delivered a lecture at Humboldt University, and gave a sermon at St. Mary’s Church calling for an end to the Vietnam War, the proper distribution of wealth in America, and the release of Angela Davis. Following his sermon, Abernathy was awarded East Germany’s “Medal of Freedom” and was hailed as the representative of “the other America.” He returned several times to East Germany during the 1970s.